Wednesday 25 May: Let’s use words from different languages throughout the day.

Decided to experiment a bit today. Tuned my radio into Long Wave so that I could pick up some of the European stations to listen to how they speak naturally to their listeners. Found a couple of French stations which I could understand in parts but it was too fast for me. Still, I could get the gist [I think]. I’ve ben to France a couple of times and been told that my French pronunciation is almost Parisian. I suppose it’s the French equivalent of RP if you know what I mean, Also, spoke some Polish this afternoon to some people in the Polish Advice Centre on Picton Road. I can get by in Polish though not “conversationally” – it’s something I’d like to learn properly in future.

Bonjourno was the start of my day from my friend Gill who I thought was trying to hint that she wants to come to Italy with me. But then I read the text fron Laurence and realised id made a mistake. Doh!

was finding it hard to get new words in another language, until…..I went for a walk to the park today. I was approached b.y an old lady who was lost and trying to find her way back to where she lives. I walked back with her. She is French, born in Corsica in the 1920′s to Jewish Russian and Polish parents and even though her short term memory is not good, she still speaks 5 languages including Hebrew and Yiddish. We spoke French as we walked and she told me all about her family and how they came to be in Corsica. What a privilege. I now know that ‘Salutu’ is ‘Hello’ in Corsican.

Today to get into the spirt I wore a t-shirt that said J’adore, I decided to make this my word for the day so every time I used the work love I replaced it with j’adore. I must say my boyfriend was very confused haha

Walking to Greenhouse from school we said ciao, bonjour and salute to people walking past us on Lodge Lane. Everbody said hello back which was nice we even had some people responding in a different lanuguage

We found out that we have 10 first languages spoken in our class, these are: English, Arabic, Russian, Iranian, Somalian, Gujrati, Italian, Ghanian, German and Luganda. We have found out how to say hello in each of the languages

We are using Polish, Spanish and English languages on normally basis in our home but today we use them on the street loudly and proudly It was nice to see my boy talking in Spanish to his play friends in the morning>

I went into work and said “Bonjour” to everyone. Throughout the day I said please and thankyou in a number of different languages including French, German, Spanish and Russian. I did get a few funny looks.

Today we recieved the task of speaking a different language. As I do not speak another language I said hello in french to everyone when they came in. However, later on in the day we recieved a lesson in sign language from Sue Dwyer (that was filmed), this was very interesting and very informative. We also discussed that sometimes you do not need language to comunicate with someone, a smile and a wave can speak volumes.

“I never spoke in french in front of my friends, I have always been scared that they would laugh at me. It has been nice to speak my own language in front of everyone.”
“We played Spanish Hoops, but some people said the colours in Spanish, French and Arabic. When I didn’t know what the colour was, I foloowed everyone else!”

This has been fun! Been puzzling people all day with my scraps of foreign languages. Got a working knowledge of French but hadn’t realised how many others I have a very tiny smattering of… Latin, Arabic, Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin. So, Good Night, and Kushti Bok everybody!

Thanks to some friends in Germany a few years ago who thought they were all comedians, I learned some German lingo the embarassing way. So when I received today’s Coincidence Project the first words that sprang to mind were naughty ones. Considering I was spending the morning working in a school and wanted to keep my job, I stuck to a very safe ‘Bonjour!’ Of the two male members of my teenage audience, one said ‘What’s she sayin’ Lid?’ to the other, who just shrugged.

Sometimes a different language doesn’t belong to another country, just another county or another generation.

I arrived home from work to a ringing phone. Feeling upbeat thanks to an unexpected ten minutes of sunshine I grabbed the receiver and answered ‘Bonjour.’ I was greeted with silence. ‘Bonjour?!’

‘Is that Mrs.Summers?’

It isn’t, and I’ve been sick of telling cold-callers that she hasn’t lived here for over three years. Recognising an opportunity, I replied;

‘Parlez vous Francais?’

They hung up. Who would have thought my high-school French would be so genuinely useful to me now?!

I felt I’d completed the speaking part of my challenge, but decided that in addition, I’d try and learn some words from another language and went to see my neighbour, Adnan for some help. I asked him to teach me a simple phrase in Urdu, the national language in his native Pakistan. Adnan went one better, and taught me how to say ‘How are you?’ in:

Urdu – ‘Aap kaisay hain’

Persian – ‘Che thu r asth’

Arabic – ‘Kaif halak’

and,

Pushtu – ‘Tha sanja ye’

So far this week I’ve learned new words, tried new foods and taken a new perspective on my neighbourhood. I wonder what tomorrow has in store…

I speak french every day with my husbend .
Same language as Laurence but I come from an other country , Switzerland , Geneva , french part.
Bonne après- midi Laurence, c’est une belle coincidence de te croiser !
Claire

i said “Bonjour” to a lady walking her dog in the woods as otis and i were out on our daily constitutional. As the dogs played we walked together. she told me that at 60 she has gone back to college to learn french. Coincidence?? i could have said “hola” or “gutan tag” or used sign language to greet her.

The other day, I went for a visit on top of the Radio City Tower. As we came in to reception to get out tickets, the guy said ‘Bonjour’ to me, to my surprise as I am French myself but never met him before. It was just a nice Coincidence!